Scientists have shown that airport screening for disease will often miss half or more of infected travelers, but can be improved by customizing to pathogens. The findings are published in the journal eLife.

They present options for policy makers; for example whether resources would be better ...
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This week, doctors at the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center discovered that a contaminated medical tool had been spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria to patients. The bacteria, known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae or CRE, has been called a “nightmare” bacteria by...
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A new study developed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus links the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles to a condition that inflames blood vessels on the temples and scalp in the elderly, called giant cell arteritis.

I thought you and the rest of the TWiM/TWiP folks would be interested in the following paper: Transferred interbacterial antagonism genes augment eukaryotic innate immune function, published online in Nature this week...
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Paenibacillus species have been isolated from a wide variety of sources including soil, water, the plant rhizosphere, plant materials, food, fodder, faeces and diseased insect larvae. They are facultative anaerobes or strict aerobes and mostly motile, endospore forming rods. This is the first ti...
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The ability to use atmospheric nitrogen to support more widespread life was thought to have appeared roughly 2 billion years ago. Now research from the University of Washington looking at some of the planet’s oldest rocks finds evidence that 3.2 billion years ago, life was already pulling nitrog...
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The typical Escherichia coli, the laboratory rat of microbiology, is a tiny 1-2 thousandths of a millimeter long. Now, by blocking cell division, two researchers at Concordia University in Montreal have grown E. coli that stretch three quarters of a millimeter. That's up to 750 times their norma...
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Researchers in the US have developed a silver nanoparticle-based paper test to simultaneously detect dengue, yellow fever and Ebola. This could provide a cheap and reliable diagnosis for all three diseases, that’s as quick as a home pregnancy test.

Since life originated on Earth between 3.8 and 3.9 Ga ago, microorganisms have significantly shaped and influenced the chemistry of Earth’s surface and subsurface environments. Reconstructing the evolution of early microbial life depends mainly on finding organic and mineral remnants of microbia...
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The entry of enveloped viruses into cells begins when the membrane that surrounds these virus particles fuse with a cell membrane. The process of virus-cell fusion must be tightly regulated, to make sure it happens in the right cells. The fusion activity of measles viruses isolated from the brai...
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According to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance commissioned by the UK Prime Minister, failing to address the growing problem of drug-resistant infections could cause 10 million deaths a year and cost up to $100 trillion USD by 2050.

A new study suggests that bacteria may be able to jump between host species far easier than was previously thought. Researchers discovered that a single genetic mutation in a strain of bacteria infectious to humans enables it jump species to also become infectious to rabbits. The discovery has m...
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Four Web-based training modules developed by Johns Hopkins Medicine for emergency department personnel who treat patients with infectious diseases are now available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

The appearance of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change, says a noted zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

A new family of bacteria that are common in malaria mosquitoes has been described by researchers at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Uppsala University in Sweden, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany, and the Veterinärmedizinische Universität, Austria. Now, attempts ar...
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